In Memoriam - The Life of Lily Potter
by Adiemus
Summary: The story of Lily's first year at Hogwarts, as she told it to me a few days before she went into hiding for the last time.
1. Silent All These Years

my dear friends 

** in memoriam -   
the life of lily potter**

_my dear friends -   
_ _ herein you will find the story of Lily Elaine Evans, whom you probably rarely think of as anything but Lily Potter, deceased mother of your beloved Harry, or perhaps sometimes as the wife of her ever-popular husband, James. But Lily was a powerful wizard in her own right, and an even better musician - which are the very reasons the dark lord sought the Potter family out in the first place. she is a noble heroine; her life story a tragedy to rival _Othello _or _Romeo & Juliet_. Here you will find the true account of Lily's seven years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, and you will learn how fulfilling her two deepest passions - music and magic - finally became the destruction of herself and her beloved husband. I tell it now to you as she first told it to me._

Andrew 'Adiemus' Evans_ , first cousin to Lily Evans_

**first year at hogwarts**

_Chapter 1 - Silent All These Years (Tori Amos: __Little Earthquakes_)

_Years go by will I still be waiting  
For somebody else to understand  
Years go by if I'm stripped of my beauty  
And the orange clouds raining in my head  
Years go by will I choke on my tears  
Till finally there is nothing left  
One more casualty_

My earliest memory is of climbing up on the kitchen table and jumping off and spraining my ankle, quite convinced I had suddenly developed the power to fly. I have many other similar memories - I suppose you could say that I lived with my head in the clouds. I spent hours daydreaming about valiant knights defending the king and me (the queen, of course) from attacking hordes of barbarian Arabs; about magicians who lived in the clouds and cast evil spells upon the people; about discovering the Americas with Christopher Columbus - yes, I imagine I spent far too much time daydreaming for my own good. Mother and my teachers were constantly scolding me for it, and whyever couldn't I be more like good, sensible Petunia who never did anything wrong and always got perfect grades? She was always held up to me as a model of perfection, and I think it's because of that that I was horrid. You see, Petunia really _was_ good, at least at first, whatever she may be like now. I remember her consoling me many times after my episodes with mother. She would wipe the tears out of my eyes and bandage whatever cuts mother may have given me. And I remember - curse me - always lashing out at her, always hating her, because she was held up to me as what I ought to be. No, I was not an agreeable child.

But on with my story - once I began attending grammar school, I quickly became disillusioned with the world in general, and retreated into my own private daydreams for a number of years. Mother would never let me see a doctor or a psychologist for fear they would see the bruises across my body. I didn't mind the beatings so much, really - at the time, at least. I didn't realize that it was mother's way of venting her pain when father hit _her_. Nothing so noble. I merely retreated to my magic castle in the clouds, where I was a princess and a magician and a knight all in one, and servants brought me steaming silver mugs of cocoa. A psychologist would have had a field day with me. 

So when my notice of acceptance to Hogwarts came, I was certainly less than excited - after all, it was here in Britain, so it couldn't be especially grand. My palace in Italy was certainly far more beautiful, and I was sure I learned more magic there than anyone at Hogwarts could have. That's how far I was into my fantasies, you see.

It was Petunia, believe it or not - yes, cold, hard, stern and proper Petunia - who got my drunk father to sign his shaky signature across the permission line, who stole three hundred pounds from his wallet, and who coerced me into going to Diagon Alley to be fitted for robes and a wand and so forth. For as I said, Petunia really _was_ good, and she really did love me - which is why she would go to any lengths to get me out of the house. I think she feared what my mother would do to me in one of her rages, although I didn't realize this at the time, because I never bothered to pay any attention to the real world.

I can remember the very instant when I began to return to myself. Petunia, looking nervous but determined, got a wizard in the bar to open the door to Diagon Alley for us, and suddenly I was blinded by the sunlight. I had never seen such _real_ sun. It felt alive on my face, not the tired, dying, orange ball of gas that existed in the world I rarely bothered to return to anymore. Then, sunspots fading from my eyes, I looked out into Diagon Alley, and saw colour and life. Men and women in vibrant robes of varying colors hurrying back and forth, some on seemingly urgent business, some taking their time and browsing - all alive, and all full of colour.

The rest of our time in Diagon Alley passed in a blur. Changing pounds for galleons, purchasing a wand, buying supplies from the list, being fitted for robes - and when I stepped out onto the London streets again, I suddenly realized what vigor and beauty I had been missing all these silent years in my mind. I never returned to my castle in the clouds, or to my Italian palace. For the first time, I was really alive, and experiencing real emotions - alternating nervousness and excitement and premature homesickness. I was going to a _real_ school of magic.


	2. I Dreamed A Dream

_my dear friends -  
i fear and expect a good deal of hatred from many of you when you see the house assignments of Lily and her friends. But I beg you not to blame the messenger for the message - I only tell it to you as it was told to me by Lily. But much as Lily and the small troupe of friends that built itself around her may have hated at first being seperated from each other, it is my firm belief that the short respite from the hatred between the houses that went on before and goes on again now was due in its entirety to the strong bonds that linked Lily with her friends, thus linking the houses together. This diversity in Lily's social clique, spanning school houses and years, would also later become directly responsible for that final reinstatement of the Triwizard Tournament, which cause the dark lord to regain his power. Yet another instance of Lily's noble dreams and works rising up to destroy her and those she loves. Was Lily under a curse? Or was she perhaps simply too good a magician and a musician for such a cruel world?_

_ -Andrew '_Adiemus_' Evans_

Chapter 2 - I Dreamed a Dream(from _Les Miserables_)

_Then I was young and unafraid  
And dreams were made, and used,  
And wasted  
There was no ransom to be paid  
No song unsung  
No wine untasted._

Through the window, I could see the mist swirling across the surface of the lake, and overlooking it on a high cliff was a magnificent castle that sprouted turrets and parapets at completely incoherent and unexpected angles. The overall effect was one both of dignity and spontaneity. I had never seen anything so magnificent in my life (unless you count my palace retreat in Italy, which would have been far more interesting to me than this up until the moment I felt the vigour of Diagon Alley beating itself into me). "Oh," I breathed softly. "It's so beautiful."

Instantly the three other first-years in the compartment were crowding for a glimpse of the castle. I gave up trying to watch the castle grow nearer as Lavinia and Mariann and Peter forced their heads in front of mine. Eric and Margarethe and Severus, who were also in the compartment, exchanged knowing smiles. They remembered their first views of the castle well.

Soon enough, I heard the brakes squealing against the wheels, and the train came to a rumbling halt. I glanced out the window of my compartment and saw the castle rising against the starry night sky, its gray stone walls forming a crazy angle with Orion's Belt. I took another moment to savor the picture, to wonder what kind of life awaited me here, for an instant dreaming again my dream about evil sorcerers in high towers waiting to be defeated by me: the valiant knight, and the beautiful princess, and the powerful magician.

I felt something tug on my arm, and turned to see that it was Marianne, who was saying crossly, "Snap out of it, Lily! You can gawk at the castle another time. We're being left behind." Looking around, I realized that the train was entirely deserted. I jumped up and ran after her. Out on the platform, mist swirled around our feet, sending a little chill across my back. We followed the sound of children's voices, and quickly found them boarding a group of boats that floated on the edge of the smooth gray lake. Tendrils of mist danced like tiny clouds across the surface. "Four to a boat," we heard a man yelling, and we quickly took two unoccupied seats in a boat next to Lavinia and Peter, the other first-years in our train compartment.

We didn't talk on the journey across the lake. Marianne said something once, but the sound was deadened by the water and the lamplight was flickering eerily against the mist, and she quickly closed her mouth again. We were all lost in our own thoughts - instead of nervous and excited, we were now simply terrified. The castle loomed ominous against the night horizon, and I was sure I saw a flash of scales under the moonlight there a little way down the lake. The sounds from other boats drifted to us across the water, but the voices sounded empty and afraid. The journey ended none too soon. 

The rest of the evening passed in a frightening blur, and I won't bother to bore you with details, since the ritual is the same every year, and you've probably heard it a dozen times from a dozen other students. Suffice to say that the feast was magnificent, although I didn't eat any of it, and the deputy headmaster who greeted me looked stern enough to have literally bitten my head off if I once spoke out of turn. 

The ceremony everyone had been waiting all evening for seemed to take forever to arrive. Severus and Eric and Margarethe, who had sat with me on the train, had filled the first-years in on the details concerning the houses. Their conversation was riddled with sometimes heated debates over the superiority of their various houses (the only thing they all agreed upon was that Ravenclaw was full of snobs), but we did manage to get some useful information from it. For one thing, we all realized that this was among the most important moments of our time at Hogwarts. It would define our friends and influences over the next seven years, and I would undoubtebly come out very differently from one house than another. The sorting hat supposedly knew how to put us in the house most suited to us, but they had all been very vague on that.

It was not until I saw Headmaster Dumbledore bring out the hat that I realized they'd been referring to a literal hat. I thought it was an odd nickname for some sort of test. And when "Acaras, Julian" was called, the entire hall went quiet. The suspense crackled in the air just below hearing level. But we could all feel it. "Addams, Marianne." I felt her get up from her chair beside me and try to walk at the right speed on her trembling legs to the stool. She sat down, and the hat had barely touched her head when the hat bellowed, "GRYFFINDOR!". She went to join the Gryffindor table. I apprehensively for me name, both wanting and not wanting my turn to pass quickly. "Bellevue, Erin." "Bysanium, Minerva." "Carigor, Ryan." "Davies, Will". "Evans, Lily." 

It took me a moment to register that my name had been called. I stood and walked the interminable distance to the stool, now both terrified and excited beyond words. I felt the hat being placed upon my head. I almost jumped off the stool as I heard its voice in my mind. _"Hm...very interesting. Certainly not Hufflepuff - you're far too selfish for that." _I was too stunned to reply. _"Slytherin, perhaps? Yes, you'd do very well in Slytherin. You've got more brains than the average Gryffindor, and you're really not the bold daring warrior type anyway. Slytherin or Ravenclaw...Slytherin or Ravenclaw...oh, I hadn't noticed this...you love music! Well then, I think it'd best be" _"RAVENCLAW!" Stunned, I pulled the hat off my head and moved slowly to join the Ravencalw table. Music? I'd hardly ever heard music in my life! Certainly never paid attention. And I was to join a house of snobs just becasue the hat thought I liked music?

The rest of the evening passed without my notice. I was far too tired to notice "Lupin, Remus" become a Ravenclaw, or "Pettigrew, Peter" become a Hufflepuff. I remember my house prefect leading us all to the Ravenclaw common room, and being led to my dormitory, and seeing my bed. I don't remember anything after that.


	3. The Music of the Night

Chapter 3 

Chapter 3 - The Music of the Night (from _The Phantom of the Opera_)

_Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation  
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination ...  
Turn your face away from the garish light of day  
Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light  
And listen to the music of the night._

The next day I woke up feeling refreshed. After dressing, I hurried down to the common room to wait for the prefect who had promised to take us down to breakfast. I doubted I could find the way back to the great hall on my own. It took me a moment to realize that I had woken up far earlier than everyone else. I checked the large grandfather clock in the corner and realized it was still nearly two hours until breakfast. I resigned myself to a wait.

For the first time, I actually took the time to take in the Ravenclaw common room. There were books everywhere. Although the students had only been here a since yesterday evening, reference books of all kinds were stacked in piles on all of the small tables, which were scattered throughout the room. The room was round and very tall - it must have been in a tower - and a spiral staircase wound up around the outside, going up at least five levels of balconies. Each balcony wrapped around the inside perimeter of the tower, and the walls of each of these levels were completely covered with bookshelves, all of which were stuffed to overflowing with books of every kind. The bottom floor, where I was standing, was littered with large, comfy armchairs, each with a small table nearby. On one end of the room was a huge fireplace, at least as tall as I was. On the other was a small wet bar, which looked to have little but coffees, and a few flavours of Italian soda. I wasn't a coffee drinker, but I decided to make myself a raspberry soda. 

A few people - mostly sixth or seventh years who seemed to know exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it - drifted in and out of the room as I drank. Just as I was finishing, Remus Lupin came down he stairs that led to the boys' wing. He was on the small side - not really thin, but definitely not tall - and had dark-brown hair that he apparently hadn't bothered to comb. 

"Morning, Lily," he said groggily. Without glancing at me again, he quickly made and gulped down an espresso. "That's a little better," he said, not sounding quite as sleepy. He glanced at the clock. "Dang, still an hour and a half till breakfast? Why the heck did I get up so early? I'd go back to bed if I hadn't just pumped my brain full of caffeine." He plopped himself down into an armchair right across from mine, then immediately jumped back up. "Come on, Lily. I'm not waiting around here for an hour and a half. Let's go explore the castle. It can't be too hard to find your way around."

"Yeah, right. We'll be lost in five minutes." But he ignored my remark, and I followed him out the secret door anyway, sliding the large section of bookshelf back into the wall until it clicked, then following Remus out of the library. I was wrong...it didn't take five minutes for us to get lost. It took two. After we realized we didn't know our way back to the library and the Ravenclaw house, we wandered around pretty aimlessly looking for the library, the great hall, or someone who could point us the right way.

We became more lost by the minute. It was when we were walking down what I later learned to be the south fourth-level corridor, past a row of classrooms that seemed mostly empty, that I heard it. At first I thought it might be the wind coming through the window, but before long, I realized it was some kind of music. The lilting melody was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, as was the instrument. I was spellbound. I'd never known before how music could pierce your senses and stir your emotions like that. I could tell Remus heard it, although it wasn't having the same effect on him.

It didn't take long to find out where the music was coming from. We stopped outside a classroom door that looked just like all the others in the corridor, except for a plaque hanging above it that announced "Professor Rhys-Davies" and then in smaller letter, 'music teacher'. Light streamed from under the door, and it was from inside that the music came. The song sounded like wind - I don't know how that popped into my head, but when I played the song later, I always thought of it as a song about a soft wind slightly stirring the surface of the green ocean.

Without thinking to knock, I swung the door open. An old Irish woman with the whitest hair I'd ever seen was seated in the middle of a very large room playing on what looked to be a small pipe. She stopped, startled, and looked over at me, and smiled. "Good morning, dear. May I help you?"

~

Over the next two weeks, I met with Professor Rhys-Daives (who didn't actually teach a class, except an elective for seventh-years only; mostly she did private lessons) every day. At first she worked with me on my voice and the harpsichord, and I was ashamed at how terrible both sounded. But she insisted I had real talent ("You'll be a stunning mezzo-soprano, dear. Your voice has such clarity."), and I practiced hard. I ignored most of my other classes and didn't bother with homework. Every spare moment, I went up to my dorm to practice singing with breath concentration in my lower abdomen ("oh, my dear, your breath is so _high_! You'll never get any kind of pressure _that_ way!") and going to one of the three small harpsichord practice rooms ("you _must_ hold your hands higher above the keyboard, Lily dear. They look squashed. Pretend you're holding a bubble." ).

At the end of two weeks, Remus pointed out to me that while all the other first-years were making lots of friends, I'd hardly talked to any students but him; and I'd hardly even spoken to him over the past week. Also, I knew that at this rate I would be getting failing grades in transfiguration. So I toned my amounts of music practice down a little - but I had discovered an obsession that I would carry for the rest of my life.


	4. Strangers Like Me

my dear friends 

_my dear friends -   
_ _ this chapte in Lily's life is arguably one of the most important events in the history of Hogwarts. With Lily's arrival at Hogwarts, a short era of unity and trust began, which was the only thing that got it through those dark years when Voldemort was in power. _

_-Adiemus Evans_

Chapter 4 - Strangers Like Me (from _Tarzan_)

_I wanna know  
Please show me  
So much to learn   
About these strangers like me..._

A week later, Lily sat with Remus at dinner at the Ravenclaw table. "I cut back on the music to try to make friends, Remus, like you suggested. But the other first-year girls in Ravenclaw are all hopeless snobs! Angie even called me a mudblood yesterday. I've never heard it before, but I could tell from the other girls' faces it was pretty bad. They tolerate me, but they don't _like_ me, and _I_ certainly don't like them." 

Remus swallowed his mouthful of turkey, then said, "The boys aren't so bad...most of them, anyway. Jack and Will and I get along great. But you're right. I really kind of wish I weren't in Ravenclaw. It seems like people here and in Slytherin think they're above the rest of the world, even though Hufflepuff's won the house cup three years running."

Lily didn't say anything, but it bothered her how true his words were. Why should she be stuck in a house full of snobs just because of some dumb old sorting hat? Making up her mind quickly, she piled her silverware onto her plate, and stood up, plate and goblet in hand. She looked around the room, caught a flash of dark red hair under the Gryffindor table, and quickly made up her mind. She walked across the room, suddenly afraid, and tried to look inconspicuous. It didn't work. First Ravenclaw, then Gryffindor, then the entire room quieted as she took a seat next to Marianne at the Gryffindor table. She felt the eyes of everyone on her. She stuffed a large mass of spaghetti into her mouth and chewed noisily. Everyone turned back to their own tables and the talking began again in earnest. Professor Aerit stood, but Dumbledore put a calming hand on her arm, and she took her seat again, looking upset.

"Lily, what the hell do you think you're doing?" asked Marianne. 

"Oh...um...can't I sit with you?" Marianne looked at me for a moment, as though seeing a whole new side of me, and then burst into laughter.

"Good on you, Lily. You show the evil professors we won't be segregated." I blushed, but I smiled nevertheless. I ate the rest of my lunch with Marianne and her best friend James (a second year), and before long Remus came to join us. The four of us stuck together for the rest of the day, and instead of retiring to our common rooms after classes, we found an abandoned classroom and two chessboards and spent the rest of the day playing around. Marianne won every game; she took my queen in five moves the first time.

The next day at breakfast, Remus's friends Will and Jack joined the four of us at Hufflepuff table, where we had decided to sit with Marianne's sister Margarethe amd Peter Pettigrew, whom Marianne and I had met on the train. Most of the professors looked at us disapprovingly, but Dumbledore and Professor Rhys-Davies beamed whenever they saw us. During second period that day, Dumbledore took me into an empty classroom and asked flat out, "Lily, why aren't you sitting with the other Ravenclaws at mealtimes?" 

I was taken aback by his directness; I hadn't gotten to know Dumbledore, so I didn't realize what a surprising individual he can be. "I - I suppose because I - um... - I don't think that I should be kept from making friends in the other houses just because the hat thinks our personalities are different."

Dumbledore looked thoughtful, but didn't say another word, simply waved me out the door. A very odd man. I was late to potions, but Annie, the potions master, didn't seem to mind much. She was never very strict with us. At lunch that day, I notice a few more people were moving around. Remus sat at Ravenclaw with Peter Pettigrew (a Hufflepuff), and James and Marianne and I decided to take a chance (I wasn't aware of what humiliation they were risking, since I didn't realize to what extent the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin went) and sit at Slytherin. 

We stood at the head of the table, looking around uncomfortably for a spot to sit, and receiving less-than-welcoming stares from many of the Slytherins. We were on the verge of leaving when someone near the other end of the table called "Oy, Lily!" It was Severus Snape, the second-year I'd sat with on the train. We moved in his direction, and he cleared a space around himself for us. Marianne and I sat down on his right; James across from us. 

"Severus, these are my friends, James Potter and Marianne Addams. They're Gryffindors." The smile on Snape's face was strained, but it was definitely a smile, and he shook their hands with something resembling friendliness." 

"Nice to meet you both. This is my sister, Lavinia," he said, motioning to the first-year on my right, "and my mate Sirius Black," motioning to the handsome young man who sat next to James. Sirius, also apparently making an effort to be civil, shook James' hand and nodded to Marianne and I. 

The conversation was strained at first, but we quickly warmed up to each other. Severus was a little like the Ravenclaw girls I had been avoiding, but he was allright. Lavinia was very quiet, and when she did spoke, she was always faintly rude; but I don't think it was intentional. It was clear that Severus absolutely doted on her. Black was better than Severus - he and James warmed up to each other immediately, and the three boys and Marianne spent the rest of the lunch period discussing varieties of broomsticks, a topic I knew nothing about. I tried to make conversation with Lavinia, but it was a lost cause, so eventually I just shut up and listened.

Remus and James and Marianne and I spent the afternoon in our abandoned classroom again. But this time, Peter Pettigrew was there too, along with Sirius Black and Severus Snape. This small group, which linked the four houses together for a short seven years, was the foundation of the first Order of the Phoenix.


	5. The Fly

my dear friends 

_my dear friends -_

_ you have already seen how the boundaries between the houses were diminished, allowing Remus, James, Peter, and Sirius to becoem as good friends as they did. here begins the answer to a great many other things you may wonder about, that seem to have no reason. in particular, why, when Severus and Sirius were such good friends at first, did they become such terrible enemies? why has Harry never heard mentioned the name of Marianne Addams, the woman who was Lily's best friend for most of her years at Hogwarts and who very nearly married James Potter? the answers, dear readers, lie within._

_ -Adiemus Evans_

_ps - should you wish to learn more about _A Requiem for a Dream, _the book penned by Ravenclaw and Slytherin that Lily look at in this chapter, it will be appearing here shortly, translated from the Middle English by myself and miss Alicia Jennings._

_Chapter 5 - The Fly (Sarah Brightman: Fly)_

_I know a colourful room  
Where we can fly  
And take a spin to the moon  
On Aunt Angelica's pie  
I am a fly, pie in the sky_

"Great Morgana - it's nearly the Christmas holidays! I feel like I've been here two weeks, not three months!" I threw myself into an armchair nearby Remus's in the Ravenclaw common room.

"Don't I know it - we haven't even had a chance to look around the grounds!"

"But we've been busy - doing all kinds of useful things like making feathers float, and making matches pointy, and learning why vampires hate garlic. I'm sure _that_'ll come in handy next time we're in Romania," I said disgustedly. I got up and went over to the panel of twelve-foot-high windows. I had hardly been outside the castle since I arrived, and then only to watch games out on the quidditch pitch, or to practice flying. Looking down, I saw the lake that lay at the bottom of the cliff upon which the castle perched. Looking out even farther, I could catch a glimpse of the forbidden forest. Looking the other way, I saw nothing but snow, ice, and forest.

I turned to walk over to the wet bar. I needed coffe (Remus had hooked me earlier in the year). I wanted a latte. No, too weak. A java, then. As I turned, though, a brilliant flash of red caught my eye. I quickly turned back and squinted. I couldn't make out anything in that direction but ice and snow. Slowly, a turned my head again. A brilliant flash of green - then it was gone. Back the other way - now purple. Perhaps it was just a reflection of the snow, but...

"Oy, Danielle!" I called up to the first balcony, where Danielle Gingerluck was reshelving a few books. She was the prefect, and had claimed the job of Ravenclaw house librarian. Everyone had been quick to allow her, since it was a massive job. Ravenclaw had quite a few books, to put it mildly, and Danielle seemed to know what was in every one of them and where it was kept. 

"Yeah?" She leaned over the balcony's railing so she could see me. 

"Where could I find a map of Hogwarts?"

She considered a moment. "There's a really detailed one of the castle in _The Foundation of Hogwarts_; we don't have that in here. It's in the school library, fourth row, first column, second shelf. By Godric Gryffindor. Then of course there's _Hogwarts: A History_, but its maps are pretty general. Then if you're looking for a map of the whole lands, Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw wrote _A Requiem for a Dream_ together - it's actually written in fiction form, but the maps of the grounds are the best anywhere. Fourth balcony, fifth shelf from the left, second row." I nodded, amazed at her memory for books, their contents, and their locations. 

I hurried up to the fourth balcony of the Ravenclaw tower and quickly found the book. It was a large one, with a red leatherbound cover. I opened it to the first few pages and quickly found what I was looking for. Here was the castle, and there was the forbidden forest, and the lake, so the glint I saw must have been in that direction... I traced my finger along the page. There, written in such small lettering that it was hard to read, was written, "Here lies Rainbow Lake."

**

Technically, Remus and I were supposed to be in Transfiguration class in ten minutes. But the worst that would probably happen would be a detention, and this was finally something out of the ordinary routine of school. Neither of us was very good at transfiguration, anyway. 

After exerting a little 'negative influence' (as the strict deputy headmaster later referred to it) on our peers, the whole gang of us was trudging out through the snow toward Rainbow Lake. By this time, we really had overcome the division between the houses. James and Marianne were there from Gryffindor, and Sirius and Severus from Slytherin (Lavinia usually deign to hang out with us), and Remus and I from ravenclaw, and Peter and his best friend Antares (you can always tell which ones have wizard parents) from Hufflepuff. All of us were under my disguising charm, one that I was very proud of, and that we got a good deal of use out of. Unless someone was specifically looking for us or carefully scanning the terrain, their eyes would pass right over us without noticing us.

It took about twenty minutes of trudging through the snow ("we should have brought broomsticks," complained Sirius) before we reached a little knoll. As I crested the small hill, the sun flashed off the crystal-clear water in front of my, and my eyes were dazzled with the bright purple color. The sun moved behind a cloud and the glare subsided, but the lake remained a startling shade of purple. I turned my head slightly in one direction, and suddenly the lake was green. Turned it again - orange. Blue. Red. Pink.

I walked down to the edge of the lake, which was strangely devoid of any kind of ice. I dipped my hand into the deep scarlet water. It was warm. I looked down into it. The water was as clear as air. Clearer, perhaps. I could see the maroon boulders lying on the bottom, which looked to be a good five-hundred feet down - which was odd, considering the lake was only about fifty feet in diameter. And perfectly round, too, now that I noticed it. I looked back down into the now-green water - and suddenly felt very dizzy, standing on the edge of such a huge precipice. _i know a colourful room where we can fly..._ Mesmerized by the beautiful colouring, I tipped forward into it and didn't even notice until I heard the splash. 

The spell that the lake had cast over me and my friends was broken, and suddenly we were all laughing. Peter and Severus ran to the edge of the lake to help me out. "Cold, Lily?" Severus asked with a grin. I started to laugh, then stopped and considered.

"No, not at all...for that matter, I'm not wet, either." Severus looked at me curiously, then dipped his hand down into the lake and drew it out.

"She's right," he said, sounding awed. "The water's about twice as warm as the air, and it definitely isn't wet." He held out the hand he had just dipped in for everyone to feel.

"Well then, why are we all standing here on the shore, freezing our asses off?" asked Marianne as she threw her winter cloak to the ground and jumped into the pool. Before long, we were all splashing around in the pool - dunking each other, splashing each other with water that didn't get us wet, seeing how deep we could dive before coming up for air... The water was so transparent that when you dove, you could see everything as though there were no water there at all, which gave us a feeling of flying, since that's what it felt and looked like. Flying in a purple - now red - now orange - miasma of colour.

The lake was obviously not naturally formed. The surface was a perfect circle, and though the walls were rocky and sometimes jagged, the edge of the lage was a complete dropoff. There were no shallows. The only place to rest your feet was five-hundred feet down. We didn't bother to worry about how the lake had been formed, though. We just enjoyed the feeling of swimming in warm, dry water. 

**

Someone else had skipped class that period. That someone, sitting deep in the Slytherin common room, had become so engrossed in a book that she'd completely forgotten about classes. She became more and more interested in the book by the page. This could be her chance to prove herself to that high-and-mighty crew that hung out with her brother. She knew they'd deny it, but none of them ever though of her as anything but 'Severus's little sister'. The quiet one. The one he dotes on. The one who barely had enough magic to get into Hogwarts, despite an excellent family history of magic. She had been the first person to read this book in hundreds of years - it had been hidden under a flagstone in the dungeons. She had tripped over the flagstone, pulling it up and revealing the book. The cover was smeared with blood. It was entitled _The Curse of Rainbow Lake_.


	6. Speed of Light

my dear friends 

_my dear friends -   
_ _ my apologies on not being able to post this chapter sooner. I have been hard at work on several other projects, including my own original story, _Magefire_, and a translation from middle English of _A Requiem for a Dream_, written by Rowena Ravencalw and Salazar Slytherin, which will be appearing here probably in the early fall. So I pray you forgive me for the delay in posting this next chapter, and I hope that it will be worth the wait._

_ -Adiemus Evans _

Chapter 6 - Speed of Light (from Avalon: _A Maze of Grace_)

_3 A.M and you're tossing in your bed  
Thoughts are turning in your head  
You're hanging on, but how much longer?  
Why do empty things you pour your soul into  
Never fill that void in you?  
Makes you wonder._

The Christmas holidays came quickly, and we all said our goodbyes and exchanged gifts on the last day of classes. The holidays passed quickly - nothing special happened at home, but I wanted to be there anyway, if only so no one would suspect that my family was other than perfect. I returned to school, and classes continued, and winter quickly turned into spring. The eight of us continued to swim in rainbow lake on the weekends and after classes; it became our private retreat from the world. We had picnics there, did our classwork there, I practiced my voice lessons there, we even accidentally fell asleep and spent the night there from time to time. We grew very close as a group. None of us was especially well-liked by the school in general. Our grades were nothing special (most of us were intelligent enough to get excellent scores, but we never bothered trying), we frequently lost points for rule-breaking, and we associated with other houses. 

My best friends during that time were probably Marianne and Peter. Marianne was simply more fun to be around than anyone else I knew, and Peter held a certain attraction for me simply because he was so uncomplicated. Gullible and not especially bright, perhaps, but that made him a very straightforward and honest person. I liked that, because I'd known very few people like that before.

It was in mid-March that we found the secret room, quite by accident. James and Marianne and Remus and I were relaxing in the Gryffindor common room (we all knew where each other's common rooms were and went there frequently once we were sure everyone else was in bed). James and I had gotten into a whispered argument on herbology, so the four of us were back in a dark corner looking for an herbology book James thought he had dropped there earlier. I suppose there was something in it that would prove his point, but I never found out, because at that moment, the portrait door slid open.

We all crowded ourself back into the corner - Remus and I would be in unspeakable trouble if we were found both in Gryffindor house and up after lights out. It was not a teacher who stepped in now, however, but Lavinia Snape. She had probably heard the password mentioned by Marianne or Peter, who were never quite as discreet as they should be. She was carrying a small, ancient looking book in one hand. I couldn't read the title on the spine from my corner, but...was that _blood_ on the cover? 

Luckily, Lavinia didn't see us. She didn't waste a moment looking around. She went straight to the large painting of the Gryffindor lion and twisted a tiny rosebud on the lower-left corner of the frame. The lion looked up and said, "Password?" 

Lavinia, her nervousness apparent in her voice, said "Rainbow Lake bids me enter." Marianne and I caught each other's eyes, startled. What did this have to do with our lake? The lion bowed once, got up, and strode to the side of the picture. Where he had been lying was a little trap door. Lavinia quickly grasped the handle, pulled it open, and crawled inside. She emerged only seconds later carrying her book, and also a large piece of parchment with markings all over it. She twisted the rosebud on the frame again, and the lion lay back down, hiding the trap door from view completely. In another instant, Lavinia was back out in the hallway.

I let out my breath. I hadn't realized I was holding it. Remus and I went to bed soon thereafter, but first the four of us made a pact: We wouldn't rest till we'd found out what Lavinia was up to.


	7. Murder in Mairyland Park

Chapter 7 

Chapter 7 - Murder in Mairyland Park (from Sarah Brightman: _Fly_)

_Things that happen  
Just once  
If she'd looked,  
She would have seen it..._

A, E, G, F#...perfect. I tentatively tried a few more chords on the harpsichord. Good. Allright, then. I opened my sheet music and carefully, painstakingly, began to sound out the notes.

"Lily!" The door to the practice room burst open, and James and Severus burst into the room. 

I was beyond frustrated. "You might have knocked, James. I was finally getting it right." 

"Right. Sorry, Lily." He didn't look sorry at all. "Marianne and Antares are raiding the kitchen as we speak. We're dinner at the lake. Come on!"

I looked longingly at the harpsichord for a moment more, then gave up and followed them out, locking the room behind me. It took us no time to get down to the lake. We used the obscurity charm, as always. I'd found it in a book of intermediate charms in the library, but it wasn't near as difficult as the others in the book, and I was good with charms. We weren't breaking any rules by going to the lake right now, but we didn't want anyone seeing us anyway - the lake was our own private world.

It was nearly the end of March, and the weather was beautiful. We pulled off our shoes and socks and lay back against the little hill near the lake, enjoying the feel of the grass between our toes as we waited for everyone else. Remus arrived soon with Peter and Sirius in tow. Not long after, Marianne and Antares appeared, each carrying two massive picnic baskets stuffed full of mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and beakers of pumpkin juice. We sprawled near the lake and stuffed our mouths, talking non-stop at the same time. It was a beautiful night. The food was incredible, and the friends were even better. When I look back now, I think of that evening as one of the most beautiful in my life, until...

Marianne waited till the best possible moment (when everyone else was dogpiled on me, trying to wrest away the last piece of chicken) to yell, "Last one in the lake's a warty muggle!", then run headlong toward the lake. Severus and James, who were on top the pile, leapt up with loud whoops and barrel after Marianne, shucking their shirts as they went. By the time I managed to get up, the three of them were only a foot or so from the lake...which was suddenly a frightening black. The sky was pink, though. Now orange...now green... 

Marianne and James and Severus were suddenly moving in slow motion, only a few inches from the surface of the lake. I felt, rather than heard, Remus yell, and turned to look at him. My head moved sluggishly, as though through thick honey, and left blurred trails in the air behind it. Now Marianne was out over the lake...she was trying to backpedal, but it was too late...Severus lunged to grab her back...the sky was changing colors at an alarming rate, but the lake was so black...so black...Marianne screaming...me screaming...the lake reached up to grasp at her ankles...her head thrown back in pain...and that was all.


End file.
